‘Digital Consignment Shop’ Launching

People who want to sell software, music, photos, written works or even advice will have a new place to do business as of today--a sort of digital consignment shop on the Internet that promises to make the most of the hot new category of “peer-to-peer computing.” The OfficeFront feature being unveiled by HotDispatch Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., will allow people to sell any Web-deliverable service--basically anything that can be downloaded to a computer. HotDispatch, https://www.hotdispatch.com, administers the seller’s Web page, handles the transaction and exchanges the money. To build its customer base, the service initially will be offered for free. “We like to think of this as an analog to Yahoo or Amazon.com’s Zshops, where a person puts items they own up for sale, except in this case it’s only things that can be digitally delivered,” said Hazem Sayad, who co-founded HotDispatch and holds the title of chief dispatcher. Like Napster Inc. and its mushrooming number of file-swapping imitators that are vexing the music and video industries, HotDispatch’s software makes the most of the decentralized nature of the Internet, and its business model largely depends on it not filtering the content being bought and sold.